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from the tv-and-video-games-cause-brain-rot dept.
A Norwegian study published Monday found a seven-point dip in IQ test scores per generation among men born from 1962 to 1991. The results suggest a reversal in the Flynn effect, an observed increase in IQ scores throughout the 20th century in developed countries.
Coverage from The Week adds:
The reasons for the Flynn effect and its apparent reversal are disputed. "Scientists have put the rise in IQ down to better teaching, nutrition, healthcare and even artificial lighting," says The Times.
But "it is also possible that the nature of intelligence is changing in the digital age and cannot be captured with traditional IQ tests", adds the newspaper.
"Take 14-year-olds in Britain. What 25% could do back in 1994, now only 5% can do," Shayer added, citing maths and science tests.
More from The Daily Mail:
Two British studies suggested that the fall was between 2.5 and 4.3 points every ten years.
But due to limited research, their results were not widely accepted.
In the latest study Ole Rogeburg and Bernt Bratsberg, of the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research in Oslo, found that Norwegian men's IQs are lower than the scores of their fathers when they were the same age.
The pair analysed the scores from a standard IQ test of over 730,000 men – who reported for national service between 1970 and 2009.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:31AM (20 children)
Which mean that the IQ test doesn't test your intelligence, but rather your ability to employ critical and/or analytical thinking. Which certainly is one aspect of intelligence, but not the only one. Indeed, it is exactly the other aspects of intelligence that make AI a hard problem.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:13AM (4 children)
It's the important one if you want a job, want to go to Mars, build a bridge, feed more people with fewer resources or design a nano particle based high efficiency carbon sink.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:36AM (3 children)
Wanting to go to Mars today? And you reckon that's a proof of critical thinking?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:12PM (2 children)
Not only are we going to Mars today (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InSight [wikipedia.org]), but we're already there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover) [wikipedia.org]).
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:32PM (1 child)
What's this "we" shit? Are you claiming to be a remote controlled robot? "We", humanity, has never stepped foot on Mars, so "we" ain't there. You and the rest of the robotic species have a couple representatives there? Well, good on you. Don't worry though. "We" will be along sooner or later to upset any apple carts you may be considering. "We" will pollute the shit out of Mars, exploit it for resources, and set up some mobile home parks to really screw things up. It's just a matter of time.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:55PM
You say this like it's necessarily a bad thing.
Evidence indicates that in the past, Mars was much warmer and may have had things like usable atmosphere and running water. There may have been life, or more plentiful life is there remains life still. But now Mars is generally a cold, frozen wasteland...
...that needs Anthropocentric Global Warming to return to its natural temperature and state! Long live nature and mother
EarthMars!---
This post is tongue-in-cheek. I do not think we should pollute Mars, even if it would make it comfortably warmer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:04PM (14 children)
Seems to be the only aspect.
There's a list of wishful thinking at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_human_intelligence [wikipedia.org]
But that is hard to take seriously when it contains "cultural yes man" measures like "Moral intelligence" or "Spiritual intelligence". Even worse when you research stuff that doesn't sound too ridiculous, like spatial intelligence, google found me a study (Swanson '96) along the lines of below 100 IQ people, verbal IQ and spatial IQ are essentially uncorrelated.
Something like electromagnetic field theory is one "thing" with a couple aspects. You can't move an electric charge without making a magnetic field and you can't wiggle a magnetic field without inducing an electric field and so forth. However, no matter how sexy you paint the experimental apparatus in purple polka dots, the E+M fields shouldn't change (other than at the wavelength of violet light, LOL). Likewise it seems intelligence IS reasoning, no matter how much some folks would like to include spiritualism or sophistry.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:45PM (12 children)
are a critical component for success in the world (culture)... in the old days if you couldn't toe the line the consequences were severe, including death.
Before you can conquer the natural universe, you must first successfully navigate the human one from which you come.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:15PM (11 children)
This is redefinition of intelligence as success... obviously a critical component for success for women in a beauty pageant is nice curves, but its hard to claim "intelligence is fitness for success" and "success at a beauty pageant is nice rack" therefore nice rack equals intelligence. I'm not complaining when it happens to coincide, nor claiming there's an anti-correlation effect, but am claiming there's not much correlation beyond simple random chance.
Race car driver would be another analogy, great reflexes and high risk tolerance don't usually correlate with anything most would consider intelligence.
I'd stick with the opposite cause effect relationship where success requires intelligence but not every required component of success is intelligence.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @03:18PM (5 children)
What world are you living in?
In mine, success requires an IQ score of perhaps 70, and a myriad of other factors that an IQ score of 170 won't substitute for.
Agreed, however, that: intelligence.NE.success
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by curunir_wolf on Thursday June 14 2018, @07:56PM (4 children)
Actually, IQ is an excellent predictor of success ON AVERAGE. Extremely well correlated. There are always outliers.
84, according to the military. That's the minimum they will accept, because over the years they have determined that anyone with less basically cannot be trained for any job.
And that's pretty scary. Probably the scariest statistic of our time. It comes out to about 10% of the people are below 84 IQ, and they cannot do any job in the modern world. The menial tasks they have been able to do are by large measure going away.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:27PM (2 children)
Menial jobs don't have to go away. Just because we can automate doesn't mean we should. Human beings need to feel useful, so there are some jobs that should be kept around. We've let economic efficiency and "profits" override what is good for our civilization.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:36PM (1 child)
Menial service labor as opposed to skilled labor. The best bartender is probably a fifty cent bottle cap opener, but people like having bartenders around, so we have a lot of bartenders.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday June 15 2018, @11:32AM
I would agree with the GP with regards to those jobs not having to go away. A manufacturing company I used to work for many years ago was next door to a sheltered workshop - basically somewhere to house intellectally challenged people while finding them something to do.
We would occasionally have some simple repetitive task that needed to be done thousands of times, and they would get the job. One carer would come in with them. We would explain to him/her the job, and he/she would explain it to them, and supervise while they did it. They were the happiest, most diligent and enthusiastic people I ever worked with. They loved feeling useful, even if it was just assembling boxes.
As a society we have lost sight of that. It should not be just about if a robot can do it better and faster, but what is better for people.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:30PM
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder costs the US 6 trillion (yes trillion) dollars over a lifespan. Four percent of pregnant women meet the clinical definition of alcoholic.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @04:23PM (4 children)
Research has shown that average IQ of race drivers is 130-135. Other research has shown that the primary burden on a race driver is the enormous flow of information they have to process. I assume from this that IQ does correlate with mental bandwidth, hence the high IQs.
So, "race driver" isn't the example you want - I would suggest "Fashion Model" or "Ditch Digger" where intelligence isn't really required.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @04:36PM (1 child)
or POTUS
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:21PM
He already said Fashion Model.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:23PM
You need an IQ of 130 or greater to figure out how to get people to pay you millions for turning left for a living.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:32PM
Thats probably the pro sports effect where its not hard to drive fast and dangerous but since almost anyone could qualify, being one in a million who gets to do it selects for people very skilled at rising to the top of the pack. See also, pop star music.
General construction labor, perhaps.... not smart or sober enough to learn a profitable trade, but can carry heavy objects until body breaks down...
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:17PM
Check out the Aharonov–Bohm effect